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Revenue insurance is a promising option for farm aid

This is a guest post from Britt Lundgren, an Agricultural Policy Fellow at Environmental Defense. It is part of a recent conversation on agricultural policy.

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Fixing farm policy, which has been the single largest influence on the shape of agriculture in the U.S. since the Dust Bowl, is not easy. "Not easy" will seem a drastic understatement to anyone who has followed the endless debate on the Senate floor over the past two weeks, which has produced much hand-wringing and rhetoric about our "safe and abundant food supply," but no actual Farm Bill.

Tom Philpott has argued in recent posts that farm subsidies are a symptom of the problems associated with modern agriculture rather than the cause, and that efforts to end subsidies are bad policy. In his view, overproduction is the true culprit, and unless farm bill reforms include a mechanism to control supply we will continue to have problems.

It's easy to blame everything on overproduction, but it is just not accurate. Prices for corn, soybeans, and many other commodity crops are higher than they've ever been right now. Prices don't rise when there's too much of a commodity, they rise when demand exceeds supply.

I do agree with Mr. Philpott on one point: simply ending farm subsidies is not going to immediately end all of the environmental problems caused or aggravated by agricultural production.

But farm subsidy reform advocates are not talking about ending subsidies. We don't want to pull the rug out from underneath farmers. Instead, we want to exchange the wall-to-wall shag carpet for something more modest -- a safety net for farmers that is less market-distorting and costs less than $9 billion a year. A better safety net will do far less to amplify problems caused by agricultural production than current farm policy does, and will also free up funds that can be used to address these problems.

Greased lightning

Here's an interesting biodiesel stat:

[T]he region's supply of fryer grease is limited. Each Oregonian contributes about a gallon of used cooking oil a year to the grease market. [Emphasis added.]

That's really not much grease -- especially considering that Oregon residents consume about a gallon and a half of highway fuels per person each day. So as much as I love biodiesel, fryer grease just isn't going to power rush hour.

USDA orders Tyson Foods to stop using antibiotic-free labels on poultry

Tyson Foods will no longer be allowed to use its “raised without antibiotics” label that the U.S. Department of Agriculture originally approved in May, due to a mix-up at the agency and disagreement over whether a medication used in Tyson’s chicken feed should be classified as an antibiotic. Tyson launched a $70 million ad campaign […]

Research vs. cap-and-trade

Yes, OPEC is now "pledging $750 million for research into climate change technology" (while opposing a cap-and-trade system).

[Note to President Bush, Newt Gingrich, and Bjørn Lomborg -- it ain't a good sign when your climate strategy is the same as OPEC's.]

OPEC, however, seems a tad confused on just what a technology-based strategy could do for oil:

A few last bits of musing from Grist’s presidential forum on climate

A few final notes from Grist’s presidential climate forum, before (?) you get sick of me talking about it. Most memorable bits: Dennis Kucinich mentioning, at the very top of his speech, that he’s a vegan. I heard the sound of thousands (or at least a dozen extremely vocal) Grist readers swooning. Kucinich offering every […]

Groups announce voluntary carbon standard for offset market

In an attempt to rebut accusations that buying and selling carbon offsets amounts to a whole lotta nothin’, a coalition of three groups has announced new voluntary standards for the international offset market. The standard attempts to verify that money spent on carbon offsets goes directly to a project that does indeed help the climate. […]

The debate on plug-ins begins

Alan Durning's article makes a lot of good points about the need to do more than just improve the efficiency of our personal transport. It's a great article, but it also contains a few inaccuracies that I feel obligated to clear up before the global warming deniers (among others) try to use them.

I can tell from the comments on Alan's post that some readers are under the mistaken impression that his conclusions are a reflection of the EPRI/NRDC (PDF) report cited, but many are actually counter to that report. For example:

Why gutting commodity subsidies should be the focus of Farm Bill reform efforts

Thomas Dobbs is Professor Emeritus of Economics at South Dakota State University, and a W.K. Kellogg Foundation Food & Society Policy Fellow.

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Tom Philpott wrote an article in which he challenged some of the key assumptions underlying Farm Bill reform efforts of the past year ("It's the Agronomy, Stupid"). He contended that gutting commodity subsidies would not solve the U.S.'s long-standing oversupply problems, and that we need the money currently in the "commodity" title to remain available for eventual support of conservation and other measures reformers hold dear.

The following day, a guest post by Britt Lundgren appeared in Gristmill, contending that Philpott missed the real point of the Farm Bill debate. The real point, said Lundgren, is "whether or not the current suite of farm subsidies are actually an effective and productive way to support agriculture in the U.S."

I find myself largely in agreement with the contents of Lundgren's post, but I want to address more directly Philpott's contention that "it's the agronomy" that matters. I disagree. "It's the economics" that matters in assessing the consequences of the U.S. farm program's heavy emphasis on commodity subsidies.

California sues over lead-tainted toys

The state of California, which never met an environmental fustercluck it didn’t want to litigate, has filed a lawsuit accusing 20 companies — including Mattel and Toys R Us — of making or selling products containing “unlawful quantities of lead.”

Notable quotable

"Coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, is the crack cocaine of the developing world." — Alan Zarembo, L.A. Times, 18 Nov. 2007